“FM” by Steely Dan

"FM (No Static at All)" was Steely Dan's title song for the 1978 film FM, and it bites the hand that feeds it: where the movie celebrates the radio format, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen's lyric takes a swipe at the album-oriented rock stations of the day. They cut it during the Aja sessions with some of the same players, including Jeff Porcaro on drums and Pete Christlieb on tenor saxophone, with Victor Feldman on percussion and several Eagles on backing vocals, Timothy B. Schmit among the credited singers. Fagen sings and plays piano, and Gary Katz produced.

Johnny Mandel arranged and conducted a string section for it, something Steely Dan had tried just once before. It was their first single on MCA and their first film music since 1971, and Roger Nichols won the Grammy for Best Engineered Recording, Non-Classical for it.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.